Frankly, I think that the whole football program should be shut down.

Never going to happen. It brings in something like $50 million to the university. Though their "brand" is now tarnished.

I am glad that the Trustees seem to understand that this isn't just a PR move to fire people. They do seem to have a sense of outrage and moved quickly.

The students of Penn, however, need mandatory classes in ethics and volunteer work with abused children.

You know, it's not even about getting Sandusky into police hands as much as it would have been about making sure that kid was okay. Who knows if he was ever examined? How many ten-year-old boys go home and tell their parents they were raped?

This.

Someone elsewhere pointed out that the incident happened at 9:30 at night and the building was basically deserted. The degree to which he was leaving a young child so totally at the mercy of his attacker is hard to fathom.

McQueary should have called 911. AFTER he pulled Sandusky off the kid and beat the shit out of him.

IJS Seems the natural reaction. I can't imagine struggling with what to do when you see a child assaulted.

but we don't address what do you do when someone you trust abuses you.

Thus begins the stabination.

Exactly! These kids are so afraid of doing something wrong that when wrong is done to them, they have nowhere to turn. We talk about stranger-danger in classrooms, but we don't address what do you do when someone you trust abuses you.

Yeah. One of the kids who did report it, what happened was he came home and said to his mother something like, "If you're wondering why my hair is wet, it's because Coach and I took a shower together." Then he went to his room. And the mother was like, "What?!?!" and talked to him enough to get him to tell enough details to realize that she needed to call the police. Not many kids will actually go find someone to directly tell.

I need to post a fun trivia fact before I have a rage blackout in my office.

Yeah. I'm a nasty funk today already, Penn State aside. I think I need to go watch something ridiculous. Or look at pictures of cute animals or something.

McQueary will be coaching Saturday, but it will be a "game-day decision" whether he's actually on the field or somewhere inside.

Well, I think the state and the feds need to get involved with this given the police involved may have done something wrong.

The guy who said it was boundary issues was the state welfare department "expert."

As was pointed out earlier, in some states everyone is required to report child abuse.

I like to think that wouldn't happen here under similar circumstances, but I can't say that it wouldn't.

It totally could, the rioting at least. Imagine if Ford:Sandusky::Smith:Paterno. And I know some of Ford's falls off the wagon were brushed under the carpet. Comparing Paterno to Smith helped me understand, just a little, the feeling of betrayal (but let me be clear that the rioting students are failing at human decency, I just mean the sense of betrayal in a beloved icon). Also, two initials: B and B.

The one thing I can say about McQueary is that I can sort of see him being unable to react at the time because what he saw was so shocking and unexpected, and because it involved someone inherently senior to him.

Which is not a justification for not calling the cops, but I think it goes a little ways towards explaining why he didn't immediately grab the kid away and beat Sandusky down. He probably got a huge burst of adrenaline, and he had been trained for what, ten years, to respect and obey the coaches, so that when it came to the fight-or-flight response, he went with flight instead of fight.

He should have called the cops immediately, even if he couldn't bring himself to do anything himself about the poor boy. That's on him.

But I know from personal experience that when something really shocking and unexpected happens, I sometimes freeze, and can't act immediately. I'm not going to call that a moral failing--I think it's a natural physiological response. It takes training to get over that, for a lot of people.